ggplot2::geom_text font as the rest of graph

Question

I got the following graphs using the code given below:

library(ggplot2)
library(ggthemes)

p <- ggplot(data = mtcars, mapping = aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) + 
     geom_point() +
     theme_igray()
p
p + geom_text(mapping = aes(label = rownames(mtcars)))

p + geom_text(mapping = aes(label = rownames(mtcars)), family = "Times New Roman")

The font for the geom_text is different from the font of rest of graph. I wonder how can I get same font for geom_text as the font of rest of graph.

Edited

sessionInfo()
R version 3.6.0 (2019-04-26)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/atlas/libblas.so.3.10.3
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/atlas/liblapack.so.3.10.3

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] ggthemes_4.2.0 ggplot2_3.1.1 

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_1.0.1       rstudioapi_0.10  magrittr_1.5     tidyselect_0.2.5
 [5] munsell_0.5.0    colorspace_1.4-1 R6_2.4.0         rlang_0.3.4.9003
 [9] stringr_1.4.0    plyr_1.8.4       dplyr_0.8.1      tools_3.6.0     
[13] grid_3.6.0       gtable_0.3.0     withr_2.1.2      lazyeval_0.2.2  
[17] assertthat_0.2.1 tibble_2.1.1     crayon_1.3.4     purrr_0.3.2     
[21] vctrs_0.1.0.9003 zeallot_0.1.0    glue_1.3.1       labeling_0.3    
[25] stringi_1.4.3    compiler_3.6.0   pillar_1.4.0     scales_1.0.0    
[29] backports_1.1.4  pkgconfig_2.0.2

Setting individually `family="serif"` inside `geom_text()` and `theme_bw()` , as suggested, works for me, maybe you should add more info about your session `sessionInfo()`, if the problem still persists. — RLave, May 20 '19 at 09:17
Probably not what you seek, but calling `windows(family = "serif")` before ggplot sets all the text to `'serif'`, but in a separate window. Could it be a problem with the platform, I'm running on Windows. — RLave, May 22 '19 at 10:26

KoenV · Answer 1 · 2019-05-18T13:34:42.353

4

I am not sure why the font for axis titles is different from the font resulting from geom_text call in your graphs. If I run your code, the fonts are identical.

According to Hadley Wickham's "ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis" (2nd Ed.),

there are only 3 fonts that are guaranteed to work everywhere: "sans", "serif", and "mono" (p. 37)

If you use the following code, I think you will have the same font for axes and geom_text.

# solution for text family
### explicitely setting "family" twice
p <- ggplot(data = mtcars, mapping = aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) + 
  geom_point() +
  theme_igray(base_family = "sans")                                     ## <----

p + geom_text(mapping = aes(label = rownames(mtcars)), family = "sans") ## <----

On my side, this yielded the following graph:

On my side, I can switch on any combination of "sans", "serif", and "mono" for the 2 types of text in the graph.

Please, let me know whether this worked for you.

edited May 18 '19 at 13:34

answered May 18 '19 at 13:00

KoenV

4,113
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Thanks @KoenV for your answer. I think the fonts are still different. – MYaseen208 May 18 '19 at 13:07
@MYaseen208 I made an update to the code: setting `family` to `sans` two times. I hope this will work. Please run the code and let me know. – KoenV May 18 '19 at 13:22
Thanks @KoenV for your efforts. However, the problem persists. – MYaseen208 May 18 '19 at 14:48

Jon Spring · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-26T16:10:16.093

Does this work for you? I looked at the theme parameters by running theme_igray %>% View(), and I see that the baseline text size and color is 12 pt black, but axis.text is grey30 and has a relative size of 0.8, i.e. 9.6 pt. The slightly lighter-than-black color creates a similar appearance as using a lighter font weight, compared to the font at full black.

For mysterious reasons, as noted here, the text sizes in geom_text are scaled at a ratio of close to 0.353 [EDIT, see comment from @zeehio; it's 25.4/72] compared to theme sizes. With the color and size, these should match.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggthemes)

p <- ggplot(data = mtcars, mapping = aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) + 
  geom_point() +
  theme_igray()
p
p + geom_text(mapping = aes(label = rownames(mtcars)),
              color = "gray30", size = 12 * 5/14 * 0.8)

Here's another example. On my system (OSX 10.13, R 3.5.1) these match, which I confirmed by using the "difference" filter in GIMP, showing that they line up.

base_size = 36
ggplot(data = mtcars, mapping = aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) + 
  annotate("text", x = 1, y = 5*3:6, label = 5*3:6,
           color = "gray30", size = 12 * 0.353 * 0.8) +
  annotate("text", x = 10, y = 5*3:6, label = 5*3:6,
           color = "gray30", size = 12 * 0.353 * 0.8) +
  theme_igray() +
  theme(panel.grid = element_blank())

Thanks @JonSpring for your nice answer and explanation. Your code provide very similar fonts but still there is a little difference. Thanks any how. — MYaseen208, May 23 '19 at 04:26
The mistery of the font size is described here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/17312440/446149. It's not 5/14, but rather: 25.4/72 — zeehio, May 23 '19 at 11:12

ggplot2::geom_text font as the rest of graph

2 Answers2